2023-10-03 17:26:58
Women take part in the launch of the Child Marriage Free India campaign in a slum in New Delhi on October 16, 2022. (Photo by Sajjad HUSSAIN / AFP)
More than 1,000 people were arrested Tuesday in northeastern India during the second phase of a government crackdown against illegal child marriages, authorities said.
Some 4,000 people were already arrested in the state of Assam in February, including parents of married couples and registrars who signed the marriage commitments of minors.
The region’s leader, Himanta Biswa Sarma, announced that the police had launched a second phase of the campaign “in a special operation that began in the early hours of the morning.”
“Surely the number of arrests will increase,” he wrote on the social network X (formerly known as Twitter). “The current figure is 1,039.”
Sarma has campaigned on a program to completely eradicate child marriages in his state by 2026.
The legal age for marriage in India is 18, but millions of children are forced into marriage at a very young age, especially in rural areas.
Many parents marry their teenage children with the idea of improving the family’s financial situation by taking advantage of the traditional dowry system.
In India there are more than 220 million child brides, according to UN figures, but the number of child weddings has decreased significantly this century.
The consequences of these marriages can be devastating, since girls have to leave school to take care of the house, not to mention the problems they suffer from becoming pregnant at such a young age.
In a landmark ruling in 2017, India’s highest court said sex with an underage wife constituted rape, a ruling applauded by activists.
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© Agence France-Presse
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